20 east

We were early for the family birthday party today, Antoni is 3 years old, so we drove around the fields behind Łomianki for a while. I spotted this field of poppies and thought it worth another video experiment.

So, here’s something nice and calm for a Sunday evening – “Poppies Under a Stormy Sky”

This short clip came out of the camera as a 50 Mb .m2ts file which was then converted into a 3Mb file .wmv file. I’ve now turned down the quality setting so we’ll see what the next ones look like.

I’ve bought the handycam, I’ve upgraded my WordPress account, I’ve installed the software, I’ve downloaded the video file, I’ve clipped it and I’ve converted it to mwv format. I’ve then buggered around with everything a bit more. As a result of all this hard work and a little quantitative easing to the tune of approximately $1,100, you should be able to watch the video below.

This was taken at Zosia’s ballet school end of year show. She’s not in it, nor is it a particularly good clip [I was struggling with exposure issues] of one group at the school dancing the Polonez but it is (if it works) one small step for man, one giant leap for blogkind!

I’ve tried YouTube in the past and was not happy with the quality of the end result, nor was I happy with having my stuff on such a globally popular site. This, if it works, is something I’ll be much happier with and therefore use more often.

The implications of this for all you dear readers of 20east (and possibly Polandian also) are too frightening to contemplate!

If you would be so kind, let me know if it works for you and what you think about “The role of video in blog posts”.

According to various sources there are now one in six people in the world who are hungry, get less than 1,800 calories a day. That’s roughly the same calories as might be found in one McDonalds take away meal of a large burger, fries and a milkshake. That’s also a very SICK statistic in this day and age.

In the whole of the “developed world” there are around 15 million hungry people. Still a horrible statistic but in Asia-Pacific there are 642 million and in sub-Saharan Africa 265 million. How can we let this happen? I might, at a push, be able to find excuses for perhaps five million hungry people who refuse to move to better locations or in other ways contribute to their own situation, but one billion is totally inexcusable!

I hate to think what people will think, many years from now, when they look back on how small this planet is and yet how in 2009 the human race allowed one group to over-indulge so much while another group went hungry every day. Barbaric, selfish, uncaring, uncivilised, sadistic, short sighted, inhumane, stupid. And I’m a part of it. Shame on me.

This is something that non-smokers will not understand or care about but for the few smokers left it is an intriguing aspect of life in Poland. Nobody here owns a lighter / zapalniczka, matches, two sticks to rub together or indeed any other means to make fire. None of the Poles anyway. I know this because I do own a lighter, actually a few, and I spend most of my time outdoors lighting other people’s cigarettes when they wander over and hit me with the “Have you got fire?” line. I hate to admit it but without me, Warsaw would be a smoke free zone.

I can understand that one might forget your lighter once every six months, or temporarily misplace it once a quarter but this is deeper. This is something I’m asked as, or even more often than “Where is the entrance to Zlote Tarasy?”. At least twice a day. This has to be seen as evidence of a chronic shortage of lighters in Poland and we really should be told why this is.

It’s not like a lighter is an optional extra with smoking. It’s an essential part of the kit, if you have something you want to smoke you have to be able to set fire to it otherwise it just won’t work. What I struggle with the most here is in trying to understand why people don’t have lighters? They are not expensive, perhaps two zloty a month maximum. They are not large or heavy and so are easy to slip in a pocket. They are available just about everywhere you’d buy cigarettes in lots of different colours, shapes and sizes. They are not technically challenging to use. They are not, in themselves, anti-social, illegal, smelly or otherwise unattractive or difficult to own. Most of all, as I said, you are utterly screwed without one.

Do I get bicycle couriers coming up to me and asking if I have a chain to secure their bike to the lamppost? No. Do I have taxi drivers approching me and asking if I have a spare meter? No. Do I have tourists heading for the Holiday Inn asking if I have a spare camera so they can snap their ugly partner in front of the Palace of Culture? No. Do I have mothers asking if I have a drink of juice for their thirsty kid? No. In fact nobody asks me to help them to do anything because they are all well prepared to do it themselves, apart from the smokers, who all need a bloody light!

I’m going to start answering “No”. This will appear rather strange because I’ll be standing there smoking a lit cigarette and there will be no evidence of another foreigner around who might have given me a light but I don’t care any more. I shall learn the phrase “Go into the shopping centre, on the left is an Inmedio, they sell zapalniczki – you cheap lazy bastard!”.

You ask an over 30 year old colleague “Is an old shilling roughly equivalent to 5p or 10p?” and they say they have no idea what you’re talking about! I may as well have been talking about doubloons, farthings or guineas for all he knew.

A shilling coin

The shilling was often known as a ‘bob’ as in ‘Have you got a couple of bob you can lend me?’. The origin of this term is uncertain, although a ‘bobe’ was a French one-and-a-half denier coin of the 14th Century (the Oxford English Dictionary considers its survival in this way to be unlikely). There is also a possible connection with Sir Robert (Bob) Walpole; it is speculation that the ‘King’s shilling’ given to Army recruits may be the link here.

Anyway, the answer is 5p, not that there’s anyone alive who cares apart from me!